MugzyBrown:Dafatone: God. As I said in the last thread, why is it that we can't just appreciate that Kobe's one of the best of all time? If he's in the top 10 but not top 5, that's a pretty great achievement.

Why does it have to be "sorry but there's one guy better than you?"

Because he's built his whole persona on being the next/better than Jordan. And he's a mega douche.

MugzyBrown:Dafatone: God. As I said in the last thread, why is it that we can't just appreciate that Kobe's one of the best of all time? If he's in the top 10 but not top 5, that's a pretty great achievement.

Why does it have to be "sorry but there's one guy better than you?"

Because he's built his whole persona on being the next/better than Jordan. And he's a mega douche.

He also shoots 5% less from the field and has several fewer MVPs and Finals MVPs.

Plus he's a mega douche

Imagine if MJ had Shaq clogging up the basket. my god how could you stop either of them. You would need to put an extra guy on the court and tripple team both of them. And you would probably still lose.

I started watching the NBA in 1977 when Portland was playing Denver in the playoffs. I watched it all the time though the Magic and Bird era. I quit watching it when it became the Dennis Rodman show. I have never watched it since then except a few times in airport lounges.

poisonedpawn78:Imagine if MJ had Shaq clogging up the basket. my god how could you stop either of them. You would need to put an extra guy on the court and tripple team both of them. And you would probably still lose.

Imagine if MJ had the current rules (reduced hand-checking etc.) her would have been utterly unstoppable.

majestic:Did I not just post that? Yes, if Jordan had started when he was 18 he'd hold the record. So what is the relevance of the "record" if they don't have the same starting point?

If he started at 18, he might have never been as good as he became, as he learned a lot about winning at UNC. Also, you don't even have to go that far - if he doesn't step away from basketball for a year and a half, he still gets there younger than Kobe (if he retired after '98, then he would've been 34 when he retired; he scored about 3000 points after that point and finished with 32,000ish)

/And by citation, I mean conviction in a court of law, and not some bullshiat story by a gold-digging chick who decided to cash in after her friends told her she could.//And by "gold-digging chick etc.", I'm not talking about Vanessa.

MugzyBrown:Dafatone: God. As I said in the last thread, why is it that we can't just appreciate that Kobe's one of the best of all time? If he's in the top 10 but not top 5, that's a pretty great achievement.

Why does it have to be "sorry but there's one guy better than you?"

Because he's built his whole persona on being the next/better than Jordan. And he's a mega douche.

And of course, the evidence for him being a "mega douche" is locked away with the evidence that would've convicted him of rape, right?

majestic:A Fark Handle: majestic: Youngest to 30k points is kind of a bullshiat record considering he started in the league when he was 18.

they didn't say quickest...he is the youngest.

Did I not just post that? Yes, if Jordan had started when he was 18 he'd hold the record. So what is the relevance of the "record" if they don't have the same starting point?

well, it's an arbitrary bench mark, so whoever holds the record holds the record doesn't matter when they started. though no one really cares about this "record," because as you mention folks started their careers at different times. and if one believed that "age" and not "mileage" matter, then being the youngest to 30K could be a good predictor of what the future holds for kobe.

ghall3:If you increase the scoring in the league by making it easier to score it is a pretty safe assumption the best player of all time would be able to take advantage of that.

In '84-'85, the average number of points per game per team was 110.8In '04-05, the average number of points per game per team was 93.4

That's some interesting increasing of scoring, right there.

The fact is, most of Jordan's career was spent in a faster-paced, higher-scoring NBA. Kobe's career started in the depths of the league's average scoring history and with it slower than ever. It wasn't until halfway through Kobe's career that they even started trying to make the game faster, and it wasn't until 2010 that the average points per game per team even broke back to the positive side of 100, where it was every year of Jordan's career until he retired the first time.

This is part of why I find Jordan such a pain in the ass to deal with - it's not the person, it's the myth around him - it's not good enough for him to have been great, people seem to need to believe total bullsh*t about him, like he did it himself, like he was a great leader his whole career, like he had to play against way tougher defenses than any other player, etc.

Also, it's not Kobe who led the league in FGA every season in nine seasons out of 10 (discounting the season he came back for the final 17 games of the season - would've been a hell of an accomplishment to shoot more than the rest of the league in just 17 games).

IAmRight:ddam: You don't happen to have stats to back up your point...

Well, all I could find with a 1 minute google is this:

Thanks, forgot about basketballprospectus.

This is part of why I find Jordan such a pain in the ass to deal with - it's not the person, it's the myth around him - it's not good enough for him to have been great, people seem to need to believe total bullsh*t about him, like he did it himself, like he was a great leader his whole career, like he had to play against way tougher defenses than any other player, etc.

Also, it's not Kobe who led the league in FGA every season in nine seasons out of 10 (discounting the season he came back for the final 17 games of the season - would've been a hell of an accomplishment to shoot more than the rest of the league in just 17 games).

Kobe and Jordan are both ultra competitive and that is to be expected for someone that is at the top of their field. They also have the ego to match that and it's no surprise that they come off as a-holes to people that don't like them.

Look at all the crap (pun intended) Kobe is getting for the "big boy pants" comment on Gasol. But Jordan punched Kerr in the face during practice and I don't remember the big media storm over that.

ddam:But Jordan punched Kerr in the face during practice and I don't remember the big media storm over that.

It helps when the media's idea of coverage was to gently wash his balls while recording everything he said so they could take notes later. A whole lot of people we made into greats, if it happened now, would be trainwrecks.

Can you imagine coverage of the Beatles nowadays? Doing drugs all over the place, going on a trip to India and releasing a weird disjointed album, largely ignoring the death of their manager, finding out that they used to fight in the streets frequently (the result of which killed one of their early band members), playing bumper cars with Rolls Royces, etc.? It all comes off as humorous anecdotes (or sad ones) when people find out about them years later...but if the coverage were the same way it is today? Holy sh*t they'd be vilified (if, somehow, they were as popular).

Same goes for Jordan - if everyone knew about his affairs, his punching teammates, his terrible tipping, his assholish tendencies - if people put pressure on him to offer political opinions, if he'd had the option to go to other teams, etc...would we view him the same? The lazy, non-thoughtful people will say yes, because that's what they do when they're sucking someone's ass. But realistically, I doubt we'd deify him the way we have.

It's also really annoying the way old people are acting as though they wouldn't have gone and made up a team with their friends - motherf*ckers, you didn't have the choice, and by the time you DID have a choice, you'd already won championships with your current teams.

I didn't have the stats, and google wasn't being helpful for me, it just kept taking me to the crappy NBA team comparison site (you would think for as good as the NBA is digitally they would have a more user friendly way to look up stats)

However, you proved my point (sort of) I wasn't saying he was playing against tougher D than Kobe was at the start of his career, I meant that if you dropped an in his prime Jordan into the league today, he would score more than he did previously based on the current rules.

Look at what you posted, the trend from 1988 on is a decrease in offense, whereas it is tilted more in the offenses favor now than it was in either period. Heck put the Kobe from the year he scored 34/game into the league today and he'd score more.

IAmRight:Also, it's not Kobe who led the league in FGA every season in nine seasons out of 10 (discounting the season he came back for the final 17 games of the season - would've been a hell of an accomplishment to shoot more than the rest of the league in just 17 games).

Again I don't have the stats for this but I wonder how much that has to do with Allen Iverson being in the league at the same time, that guy sure loved to shoot and shoot and shoot

I didn't have the stats, and google wasn't being helpful for me, it just kept taking me to the crappy NBA team comparison site (you would think for as good as the NBA is digitally they would have a more user friendly way to look up stats)

However, you proved my point (sort of) I wasn't saying he was playing against tougher D than Kobe was at the start of his career, I meant that if you dropped an in his prime Jordan into the league today, he would score more than he did previously based on the current rules.

Look at what you posted, the trend from 1988 on is a decrease in offense, whereas it is tilted more in the offenses favor now than it was in either period. Heck put the Kobe from the year he scored 34/game into the league today and he'd score more.

IAmRight: Also, it's not Kobe who led the league in FGA every season in nine seasons out of 10 (discounting the season he came back for the final 17 games of the season - would've been a hell of an accomplishment to shoot more than the rest of the league in just 17 games).

Again I don't have the stats for this but I wonder how much that has to do with Allen Iverson being in the league at the same time, that guy sure loved to shoot and shoot and shoot

Don't look at the trend, look at the actual numbers. Jordan's prime captured in those graphs had higher scoring per game than Kobe's prime (2003-2008). You can't argue that Kobe isn't past his prime now.

If you look at the second set of numbers (go to the link if the posted numbers are hard to read) you'll see that even as late as 95 almost 50% of teams were running an up-tempo offense. The majority of Kobe's prime was during a period when 100% of teams were running a half court offense.

I'm a Kobe fan but even I'll say that Jordan was a better player overall. But the difference isn't as much as Kobe haters make it seem.

And LeBron had the physical attributes to surpass both of them but until recently has didn't have the mental edge that Kobe and Jordan have. We'll see if Heat manages to keep the team together for 3-5 more years so LeBron can get the rings to surpass the two.

ghall3:Again I don't have the stats for this but I wonder how much that has to do with Allen Iverson being in the league at the same time, that guy sure loved to shoot and shoot and shoot

He finished second behind Iverson once.

/he has led the league in FGA six times (if you count that he's leading the league this year).//want to guess who finished ahead of Jordan the one year he didn't finish first in FGA in that 10-year span?///correct answer is Alex English

/he has led the league in FGA six times (if you count that he's leading the league this year).//want to guess who finished ahead of Jordan the one year he didn't finish first in FGA in that 10-year span?///correct answer is Alex English

Both interesting facts. Particularly the Alex English one, I wonder how many people would be able to guess that even if they were given 10 chances

Has anybody yet noted that the flux of bad expansion teams helped pad Kobe's scoring? Against whom did he score 81 points? A Raptors team that sucked absolute ass, full of players that had no business being near professional basketball. Give Jordan more games against the Vancouver Grizzlies and the Toronto Raptors and see what his career numbers look like. Imagine if Bill Russell had the opportunity back in the day to play the Raptors.

EyeballKid:Has anybody yet noted that the flux of bad expansion teams helped pad Kobe's scoring? Against whom did he score 81 points? A Raptors team that sucked absolute ass, full of players that had no business being near professional basketball.

The Raptors, who, as an expansion team, were responsible for one of the 10 losses in the Bulls' 72-10 season?